Page 93 of No Boss
Meera glanced toward the highest shelf.
“Wait,” she was already moving. “There is more you need to see.”
She rose onto her toes, reaching for the top shelf. Her fingers brushed the leather, but didn’t quite reach.
“That one,” she murmured, breath catching with the stretch. “Thakur Vijay Kumar Anand’s personal journal. 1857.”
She tried again.
“It records how your family sheltered villagers during the uprising. How they hid them in underground passages. How…”
Meera forgot the rest of her sentence. She felt his warmth first. Then his presence.
He stepped in behind her with the ease of someone who had already decided the distance between them didn’t matter. His arm moved past hers, slow, unhurried.
Her body stilled, hand raised, breath caught halfway. Awareness hit all at once. His arm brushed hers. Her back pressed into him. The air vanished from a space that had been perfectly normal a moment ago.
Abhinav could have reached it from further away. He had decided not to reach it from further away.
His fingers closed around the journal and pulled it free. Slowly.
And then, because her body refused to cooperate with her dignity, Meera tried to step back. She pressed further into him. Her breath hitched audibly.
She froze.
Behind her, his mouth curved. He lowered the book and did not move away, letting the silence settle.
“Meera,” his voice was soft, breath brushing her ear. “Did you think I did that on purpose?”
Her eyes closed for an instant.
‘Idiot. Of course he didn’t.’
She turned.
He stepped back just enough, looking down at her with a calm that felt dangerously close to amusement.
Heat rushed to her face. She lifted her chin slightly, as if that might fix anything. “You’re blocking the light.”
His brow lifted. “Am I?”
He didn’t move. Not even a little. Instead, he held the journal out, watching how carefully she avoided his fingers when she took it.
Meera opened it immediately, her focus just a little too fixed on the pages.
“This journal records how your family protected villagers,” she continued, her voice impressively steady. “Not just landowners. Everyone.”
“Mm.”
The sound came from closer than it should have.
She turned a page. The words blurred, then settled.
Abhinav stepped back then, leaning against the table, arms folded, watching her openly.
“They hid entire families in underground passages,” she went on, a touch faster now. “For weeks. There are records of…”
She looked up. He was still watching her. Not the book. Her. And he wasn’t pretending otherwise.
